Vietnam: The Frenzied Outdoor Life of a Nation in Search of Prosperity

[June, 1999] The streets of Vietnam's two most important cities: Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon or Sai Gon) and Hanoi (Ha Noi) are more active than any I have ever seen in my life. There appears to be an unspoken belief that if traffic is delayed too long, life will cease. It's something like the goat, killed ceremonially, who has his jugular slit and is then left to run out the few remaining moments of his life. The traffic moves constantly like a stream of ants. Stoplights are only obeyed if absolutely necessary. Traffic police in Ho Chi Minh City, dressed in a sort of peach colored uniform to distinguish them from the dark green uniforms of the public security force and plainclothes police, do exist but their need seems to be in doubt. As soon as the cross traffic dwindles the push forward begins, motorbikes are still jockeying for position when the traffic begins to surge forward again. For the moment, the need for constant movement outweighs the need for collecting traffic fines for the state coffers.

Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh City is visibly more affluent than Hanoi, there are more cars and trucks and the stores are more upscale, but life on the streets of both cities is frenetic. Driving in Vietnam can be nerve racking for the uninitiated driver whether you are a driver or simply a passenger. Vietnamese honk their horns long and hard to warn pedestrians, bicycle riders, motorbike riders, and cars that they are passing. Since the rules of the road are so liberal and the range of speeds so wide, this sort of honking is incessant. On the other hand, road rage as seen on the roads of America seems a rarity. We saw almost no accidents though a friend saw five during the same time. Ironically, within minutes of finishing writing this we came across a short traffic jam where a uniformed policeman was moving a motorbike off the road following some accident.

Áo Dài

Áo Dài, pronounced "ou yai", are popular in the South, but not so much in the North. It is one of those fashions that seem to only have a last leg on life due to the global popularity of western dress. It seems designed specifically for the younger, Vietnamese female form which is often beautifully lean but well proportioned without a hint of emaciation as is so perversely admired in western high fashion circles. Made of silk or a less expensive synthetic material, the áo dài is tightly fitted on the upper body, with long sleeves and the bodice drapes down in the front and back nearly to the ankles. The sides are slit up to a few inches above the hips and the sheer material often reveals panties from where this opening slit occurs though this display is only vulgar in the vulgar, uninitiated male mind. The material that drapes down in front and back of the loosely fitted pants creates animation in the fashion with varying forms of movement that is ingenious. Often an embossed, colored top is matched with an embossed white bottom, though we learned that a matching colored top and bottom is the current fashion trend. Apparently resurrected from an untimely death at the more zealous tenets of communism, today the áo dài has a role in Southern Vietnamese women's fashion something akin to the world role of the western business suit for men. I asked one woman if she thought Vietnamese women like to wear the áo dài and she told me she thought most Vietnamese like the uniquely Vietnamese fashion.

Then there are some other uniquely noticeable Vietnamese fashions of lower culture. Long-legged, short sleeved pajamas and more rarely, lingerie is worn publicly by women in the North and South, though more so by women in the North and usually only near the house or home business. The informality of this attire cannot be overstated. Occasionally, to my undersexed delight, I would see a woman wearing such "evening" wear without a bra on. Both farmer- fisher-women and city women wear handkerchiefs or some similar cloth over their faces if working around traffic or commuting. Farmer women often wear scarves tightly around their heads underneath conical hats, which when worn with the scarves around their faces, leave only a slit visible for their eyes. Surprisingly, these heavily covered women would refuse to be photographed as much as anyone. Women on motorbikes also wear long gloves that extend up past their elbows. We were told this was to help women keep their skin fair, but it seem also to be an effort to help fight against the dust and pollution of the roads in Ho Chi Minh City. The rage of city women in both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City are hats the designs of which seem to be left over from the departed French colonials of the 1950s. Men in both North and South Vietnam wear western attire. Green pith helmets worn by the Vietnamese army are very popular amongst the men in North. Also conspicuously a part of contemporary Vietnamese fashion are medicated squares of white tape on temples serves to provide relief against headaches.

In the East money is king. I was reminded of this our second night in Vietnam. Traveling light, more so with every trip, we only brought one luggage-type bag and a school backpack. So we only had the bare essentials. Our clothing consisted of lightweight t-shirts, and very casual pants. We brought along tennis shoes, but only for the plane ride. We wore simple rubber sandals every day. We went to a restaurant that our guidebook had recommended - though it did not mention that there should have been a dress code even if it wasn't enforced. When we got out of the taxi, I was already embarrassed. You could tell by the uniforms of the male employees that it was a fancy restaurant where people just didn't wear the sort of clothes we had on. I kept warning Karen as we entered, but she was dismissive, so I muttered something of my concern to one of the restaurant workers as Karen told me that we would be informed of any dress code so we shouldn't worry. Fortunately the crowd of mostly expatriate-business people grew after we had been dining at the restaurant for some time, so we were spared too much recriminations by the other, finely dressed customers. At the end of our meal, we were handed our exorbitant bill, by Vietnamese standards, of US$39.92.

In both Cambodia, where we made a brief visit, and Vietnam, young adults are seen throughout missing limbs. In Cambodia the signs and classes along village roads instructing the population about landmines left over by the Khmer Rouge make it clear where the limbs have gone to, but Vietnam's victims are not so easily explained. A man sells postcards and books on the streets of an upscale area of Ho Chi Minh City. He shows me a picture of a young woman and two children saying this is his family. In empathy, I ask him if he has a map. He maneuvers one out of the bag he has hanging from a strap around his neck. He drops it, but refuses to take it back when I say I don't want it for the exorbitant sum, losing site of my initial intent, charity. People say you learn more about yourself and about your own culture when visiting other countries. I often discount this idea, but maybe I shouldn't be so dismissive. A woman lying on her stomach pushes herself along on a flat cart with sandals on her hands. I only notice her after she grabs my pant leg and demands some money. Looking down, I see that her legs are twisted in unusual shapes, perhaps from polio or some similar disease. Another man missing one leg and sitting on the narrow stretch of sidewalk beckons me to give him money as we pass. I pray he will not grab my leg as we pass. Fortunately he does not. A few days later I see a man hop across the street onto the sidewalk and then lean against the wall of some building as if he is glad he can finally rest. He has only one leg and no arms.

Vietnam is the first country I've been to where coins don't exist. Technically the coins do exist, but I only found them in sets attached to paperboard in a plastic wrapper for sale as a novelty item at the airport at a cost several fold their face value. During my visit, the dong was exchanged at a rate of about 13,900 for one dollar. This means that with just under $72.00 the exchange rate was about a million dong. Bills commonly circulate in denominations of 200, 500, 1000, 2000, 10,000, 20,000, and 50,000 dong or ranging in value of 1.4 cents to $3.60 and they all have bear the likeness of Uncle Ho (Ho Chi Minh). At the moment, the U.S. dollar also figures prominently in the Vietnamese economy. While exchanging travelers' checks at a bank, I read a notice advising customers that only a small amount of businesses are permitted to accept U.S. dollars as currency in their transactions. We found this notice to be a formality widely ignored. Where the price of goods is often left unmarked to permit negotiation, prices are often quoted in U.S. dollars and even where prices are marked in upscale tourist venues, the price would typically be in U.S. dollars. You could request to pay in dong, but it merely meant that the widely respected exchange rate of the day would be applied and you would use the local currency without favor or disfavor falling on either party.

I remember that before we left the U.S., I had read that what I believed to be an inordinate amount of the American workforce consists of sales people. When we arrived in Vietnam, I was even more surprised to see how many people were engaged in selling something, anything from stores or on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. Maybe it's the youth of the population that makes it seem so dynamic. Vietnam's population is extremely young. In 1998, 49.6% of the population was under the age of 19 years of age. People work very hard in Vietnam to eke out a living selling anything. There were more than two dozen shops just selling shoes in one square block of Hanoi. So much of life in Vietnam happens outdoors: eating on foot-high plastic stoops of chairs; Hair cuts which come with nose-hair cuts and ear cleanings (the one in-door salon offered the male customers a clothed massage by two, uniformed women); fruit sales; sidewalk-seamstresses/tailors; Games of Chinese/Vietnamese chess or cards everywhere; wood stands from which raw slabs of meat for sale; lottery vendors; bicycle repair shops on corners; live fowl sold and slaughtered in markets that take over whole sections of streets; cyclo drivers paused beside the side of the road half on the sidewalk and half on the street; groups of motorbike owners looking to earn a small bit of money driving someone somewhere; money-changers who pull out wads of bills from their purse to advertise to a passing foreigner; lounge chairs set up on sidewalks that act as a poor person's front lawn; and in the North, men sit or squat smoking large, bamboo water pipes. These scenes can be found in much of East Asia, but in Vietnam it is more dynamic, more intense. Even front wall-less living rooms often open out into the streets in this hot and humid country where privacy seems only to be had at a premium expense.

We asked our hotel clerk in Hanoi about all of the farmer women who show up in droves in the city every morning when everyone else is waking up. He said they take the bus or train and that they come from very far out in the province. He added that they sometimes sleep on the side of the road during their journey to the city. A couple of public security (police) drive through the streets of Hanoi's old quarter of dilapidated French architecture policing the economy. They ride on a discolored, light-blue motorcycle and half car slightly reminding me of old World War II movies where the Nazis would ride in such vehicles. A couple of ladies see the police ride by, quickly take their small plastic chairs and throw chairs on the other side of some bushes just behind them, out of view. They begin to lift their display boards full of cigarettes to hide them as well before they realize the police did not see them through the traffic. I smile knowingly at one of the women and she smiles back now that the fear has subsided. We see farmer women every morning with bunches of bananas, sitting on the closed storefront across the street from our hotel. We are told that they are permitted to sit until 7:00 a.m., but then have to keep moving, selling their produce on their feet or else they will get in trouble with the public security.

I asked a woman at a clothing shop in Ho Chi Minh City about the children selling stamps, books, and postcards who proliferate around areas where foreign tourists can be found. She told me they attend school in the nighttime so they can sell things during the day. She also suggested that their parents made them sell things during the day because the parents were lazy.

Ha

Ha is ten years old and sells such things around Dong Khoi in District 1, Saigon. Her father is 38 and drives a car sometimes and drives a cyclo and her mother also sold inexpensive goods on the streets. Ha is a bright young girl, nice and full of pride. She pushed us to buy something and we talked with her for a short while. Like others who sell postcards, newspapers and the like on the street, Ha warns us repeatedly to watch out for our money because there are a lot of thieves looking for foreign tourists. I didn't want to purchase anything she had so I offered to giver her 2000 dong just for the conversation, she warns me again when I pull out my money to keep it hidden because there are many thieves preying on foreign tourists in the area. She points to a poor, young girl walking nearby with a plastic bag and says, "She's one of them." This sort of advice was common, but unusual for both Karen and I because we typically feel safer traveling abroad than we do at home. Ha refuses my small donation saying that she can't eat with 2000 dong. A week or so later, we came across Ha again. She had sold some postcards to some tourists for 5000 dong and was busy putting her money in a little locked tin box which she had hidden in the bottom of the display box she carried her merchandise in. She smiled and talked with us for a while. I mistakenly, I now believe, thought it would have been obviously dishonest to purchase something from her she knew I didn’t want. I offered to buy her some food when I found that she hadn't eaten yet, but must have said something that hurt her pride because she refused to enter the restaurant to claim her meal. Now I think I should have just purchased something from her that I could have given to someone back home. She would have saved face and I could have helped her out in a very small way.

If you ever visit Saigon and come across Ha selling her things, please learn from my lesson. Maybe buy something from her, she doesn't sell anything expensive and tell her John and Karen said "hi." She won't remember us from the thousands of tourists she's seen, but I'll bet that some how she'll get the message.

Cyclo

Cyclo drivers harangue for business because I'm an obvious tourist. They don't understand "no", a shake of the head from side to side, yet they know how to ask you if you'd like to hire them for an hour to see the area's sites. One technique is to pull up directly in your path so you have to step around them. Sometimes they even follow you down the road for a block should you change your mind. Still they are easy to dismiss. I prefer to walk, taking in the sites slowly or to take a taxi or motorbike if going for longer distances.

We heard differing views about whether or not life is improving in Vietnam from some people we talked to. A Canadian businessman who claimed to have been doing business in Vietnam for ten years, said that he had seen no change in the social economic condition there though the government's attitude towards business practices had improved. He said that there remained a deep level of corruption that kept the wealth of the Vietnamese in a few, connected hands. A young Vietnamese man, Duong, working for the government controlled tourist firm in Northern Vietnam pointed out some changes to me. He explained that corruption has decreased because Vietnam has become more democratic. People are less afraid to point out corrupt officials than before and so corruption is less easy to get away with. Before 1986, he said, "There was not enough rice, now we export rice. Before, only the rich could own motorbikes, but not almost anyone can get one. There are some 500,000 motorbikes in Hanoi. A second Vietnamese man, Le Minh Tung, from Hanoi said life was not improving. He pointed that it can take five years to save the $2000-$2500 needed for a motorbike and that a high-paid official makes about $50 per month. By contrast, Duong pointed out that he needs to earn about $200 per month to make ends meet while in Hanoi so that he can also go to university. He said that even junior government officials with degrees only earn about $20 per month, but if you visit their houses you will see that they are lacking nothing. In contemporary Vietnam, access to goods and privileges are worth more than the salary you earn. Access even to government jobs though, is limited to party members and connections. Duong also offered that the government is now mostly communist in name only, enterprise is the order of the day.

Ideology aside, Ho Chi Minh is still venerated, perhaps increasingly as the father of post-colonial Vietnam rather than father of communist Vietnam. In Ho Chi Minh City, in front of the French designed former house of parliament, now referred to as the Opera House, there is an impressive statue of a seated Ho Chi Minh on top of a block of rock that serves to raise the statue. I jumped up onto this stand to sit for a picture with the venerable Uncle Ho only to hear a Vietnamese woman, undoubtedly a plainclothes public security officer, yell at me to get down. Her demeanor was not cajoling but authoritative as she strode quickly over to me from the bench she had been sitting at several feet away.

Duong

Duong was raised in the countryside, but had been living in Hanoi for about five years when we met him. His parents still live in the country with his sister and his brother, now regrettably that the Russian economy is performing so poorly. He said you can learn English in the countryside. He said that Russian was the foreign language of choice until about 1970, then Chinese was popular until Vietnam invaded Cambodia and China retaliated by invading Vietnam in 1979 (China, Duong thought, always wanted to take over Vietnam, either by subtly conquering it culturally or through military force). Now English, the language of international commerce is king though French is still taught. Duong's fortunate enough to have lived in both the country and the city so he is able to evaluate the benefits of each rationally. He is enticed to city life by the economic opportunity, but thinks he will retire in the country. His parents visited him while he was attending school and were bothered by the fact that he constantly had appointments to fulfill, and didn't have enough time to spend doing nothing in particular with them. Farmers intermingle with the citizens of Hanoi more than they do in Ho Chi Minh City. There are two rice crops that many farmers stay in the countryside for, but then they are free to spend the rest of the year in the city trying to earn more money or attending better quality schools after registering with police.

The desire for economic enrichment creates seemingly irrational incongruities in Vietnamese society. In a trendy disco in District 1 of Ho Chi Minh City, young Vietnamese dance awkwardly in circles consisting of groups of friends. A couple of young men dance together here, a couple of women dance together there, and a transvestite dances serially with a few friends. The young men outnumber the women 4 to 1. Men and women dance together by themselves and the women seem to avoid dancing in the direction of any particular man as if it's a taboo.

In the relatively cool evening at a park a few miles away, young lovers sit on park benches and motorbikes talking. A flood of motorbikes rolls past. A small group of male bystanders on foot, motorbike and with cyclo watch some commotion, but I don't stop long enough to see what it is. A man in his 40's approaches the bystanders from the direction of their attention and says something causing them to disburse. Then two women come running over to me. (I had left Karen at the apartment to see what life was like for a single traveler in Saigon). The first to reach me touches me slightly and asks, "Do you want?" While I'm saying, "No," the other woman rubs up against me from the other side, grabs my crotch with one hand, then puts her other hand in my pants' pocket where my wallet is. Just as her hand touches my wallet, I push her away while yelling at her.

A few blocks away about a week earlier, a couple of dozen fairly attractive women line a two-block section of the street where the flow of traffic is the heaviest. With few exceptions, the women are standing by themselves looking a little anxiously at the passing traffic making it rather clear that their sole purpose is not to while away their time. Those women who aren't by themselves are with other women like themselves. The women look to be in their late teens or early 20's are dressed casually, trendy, and most wear tight shirts, but this is not uncommon for women their age. The appearance is otherwise nondescript. It amazed me, perhaps only because I come from an affluent country and a fortunate background, to see such a contrast between this group of girls and their counterparts at the club. On further reflection, I realized that substantive difference between the two groups in a country where going to a nightclub is an unheard of expense for most people had to be economic wherewithal.

On Sunday evening, I walk along the same stretch of street where I had earlier seen girls lining the street to explore the scene further. There are only a couple of girls this evening. A young woman who had been standing by herself in the light of a bus stop notices me and walks over as I begin to pass. She looks to be in her early 20's. Grabbing my wrist, she opens her mouth to reveal that she is missing a couple of teeth as she says, "Come with me." I ask her, "Where?" and before she can respond, there is some commotion and the next thing I know, she's on the back of a motorbike with a group of some ten or so people on three or four motorbikes huddled down a side street. I continue walking down the street and an attractive young woman - with all her teeth--baring her legs up to the thighs and shirt cut short to reveal her flat stomach, says hello and looks at me. I say, "Hello" back to her but keep on walking so she says nothing further. I walk to a church to try unsuccessfully to take a picture of the traffic rush past an attractive post office and church built by the French colonials. Afterwards I return to this same stretch of pavement.

The street is now very crowded with people, mostly young women like I had seen the previous evening. Individual girls walk up to me, some saying something in Vietnamese, some asking me if I "want". Some grab my hand seductively for added inducement. A young man on a motorcycle drives up with a girl who looks to be his girlfriend. The girl solicits business from me in a similar way. I look at her as I slow down and say something in English, but she doesn't understand. The guy tries to clarify by asking me if I want to "buy girl". He tells me that I can either take her to my hotel or he can get a hotel for me and the girl. He begins to negotiate for the girl. A pimp. The girl smiles an invitation to me all the while from the back seat of the motorbike. I approach a young woman with a nice figure and ask her how much. She starts to speak in Vietnamese. An older, fat man comes up and tells me "One time, one hour $20." There are no other white foreigners to be seen in the area, the customers generally seem to be young Vietnamese on motorbikes, but I can't really tell. The older, fat man begins conversing with a woman whose age and build suggests that she is his wife. They talk from several feet apart and a few other girls approach. Some ask me "Boom, boom?"; others signal with their hands: one hand shaped as if holding a banana while the other hand, palm down, slaps down on the opening made with the first hand a couple of times in rapid succession. I ask the older, fat guy where, and he tells me "Mini-hotel. Girl $20, hotel $15, I take you by motorbike." The young woman stands by silently. Compliantly. Another girl signals to me that she will charge $30 by holding out three fingers.

About a hundred yards down the street, a couple of government billboards, more clearly visible during the day since they are not lit up at night, promote safe sex in Vietnamese to fight against AIDS.

[from the South China Morning Post, July 16, 1999]